Word: adult
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
MARCH 5, 2001 Santee, Calif. Charles Andrew Williams, 15, allegedly opened fire from a bathroom at Santana High, killing two and wounding 13. WARNING SIGNS Williams was bullied, a pot smoker, trying to fit in. He told at least a dozen people, including one adult, that there would be a shoot-out. When he later said he was joking,they believed...
What we do know is that the courts in California and Florida do not trouble themselves much with determining the motives of those usually considered to be still incapable of adult reasoning. Like most other states, both have enacted laws over the past decade to ensure that boys like Tate and Williams get tried as adults. That's why Tate was sentenced last week to life in prison without the possibility of parole--perhaps the first time a life sentence has been imposed for a crime committed at such a young...
Between 1992 and 1997, all but six states made it easier to try kids as adults. Research showing higher recidivism rates among youths sent through the adult system failed to slow the trend. Even when juvenile-crime rates began to decline in the early '90s, fear of teenage "predators" lingered. States lowered the age at which kids get shifted into the adult system and broadened the definition of so-called adult crimes. They streamlined the process that held sway for much of the last century, whereby a juvenile-court judge decided each child's fate. In more than half...
...California a referendum approved by 62% of voters last year requires that juveniles as young as 14 be tried as adults in murder cases. Prop. 21 will probably seal Williams' fate. One part of the new law was blocked in February, when an appeals court ruled that prosecutors had been granted too much power to send kids to adult court. But even if the state supreme court upholds the law, some lawyers from both sides of the aisle hope a compromise will be found somewhere between no judicial discretion and too much. Says attorney William La Fond, who challenged Prop...
...concept first popularized in the early 1970s, focuses on the positive. Its evangelists don't dwell on kids who fail under stress but on those who, against long odds, succeed. "The hallmarks of a resilient child include knowing how to solve problems or knowing that there's an adult to turn to for help," says Robert Brooks, a clinical psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. "A resilient child has some sense of mastery of his own life, and if he gets frustrated by a mistake, he still feels he can learn from the mistake...